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Unrepentant Indiv…

My mistake.

My minimum threshold is empirically-provable harm caused to real people. I refuse to accept regulation based on the fact someone thinks something will be harmful, or merely because they cannot prove it is absolutely safe. That is a clear line.

You have offered NO PROOF that what you contend is harmful is harmful, merely assertions. You’re right, of course, that I don’t accept those assertions as a basis for regulation. If you’re going to claim that something harms everyone, I want proof then that it really does harm everyone. How am I affected by reduced biodiversity in the Everglades, which is 3,000 miles from me?

Moreover, how are my RIGHTS harmed by reduced biodiversity in the Everglades? The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are there because they were considered the cornerstone rights of the republic. Central to those is the right to property. Can you look at the rights there and prove that ANY of the harms you cite as impacting everyone infringe upon any of them? Conversly, can you cite any land use regulation which does not impact any of the rights enumerated therein?

If the role of government has suddenly change to making the US a utopian paradise rather than securing the rights of individuals, then you’re claims would hold some water. Until then, and as long as the Constitution is in force, the rights of individuals shoud be held in the highest regard when considering regulation. (I do not accept the argument that, since many regulators already ignore the rights of individuals, that they should no longer be considered.)

My minimum threshold is empirically-provable harm caused to real people. I refuse to accept regulation based on the fact someone thinks something will be harmful, or merely because they cannot prove it is absolutely safe. That is a clear line.

You have offered NO PROOF that what you contend is harmful is harmful, merely assertions. You’re right, of course, that I don’t accept those assertions as a basis for regulation. If you’re going to claim that something harms everyone, I want proof then that it really does harm everyone. How am I affected by reduced biodiversity in the Everglades, which is 3,000 miles from me?

Moreover, how are my RIGHTS harmed by reduced biodiversity in the Everglades? The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are there because they were considered the cornerstone rights of the republic. Central to those is the right to property. Can you look at the rights there and prove that ANY of the harms you cite as impacting anyone infringe upon any of them? Conversly, can you cite any land use regulation which does not impact any of the rights enumerated therein?

If the role of government has suddenly change to making the US a utopian paradise rather than securing the rights of individuals, then you’re claims would hold some water. Until then, and as long as the Constitution is in force, the rights of individuals shoud be held in the highest regard when considering regulation. (I do not accept the argument that, since many regulators already ignore the rights of individuals, that they should no longer be considered.)

As I said before, not all harms are rights violations. Rights violations are a subset of harms distinguished by (in effect) the fact that they are guaranteed – a priori to any empirical observation of their actual effects – to be universally harmful. Rights are what they are not because their actual violation has been observed to be harmful, but because empirical observation of the nature of conscious beings identifies them as absolute requirements for the continual functioning of the consciousness. Property is one of those rights. I do not support any basis of regulation for anything short of a rights violation, even if the harm was undisputed. There is no right to biodiversity.

If one company goes out of business because a competitor did a better job, that is a harm. But it is not a rights violation because there is no right to have a successful business. The only right involved is to engage in whatever voluntary trade a businessman can convince his customers to engage in, and in the form that he and his customer agree to. But your logic would have that harm mitigated by government regulation that changes the nature of the trade itself, with the effect that it is no longer voluntary.

You have a hard time accepting “that the government can intervene to facilitate property ownership but then has no legitimate role in regulating it due to environmental consequences” because you have no understanding of the nature of the government’s actions and how the two are completely different. Government does not create the right to property. Government, in facilitating and enforcing contracts, acts to support an already existing right – one that would exist, though possibly unenforced, even if no government were present. It is not intervention to protect that right, it is a service provided on behalf of the parties involved without changing the nature of the transaction in any way. Regulating business, the way you wish for, is intervention in that it acts against the parties involved, and changes the nature of the transaction, on behalf of third parties not involved in the transaction. But just as the government cannot create the right, it also cannot take it away. The right to unfettered business exists even when the government abrogates it.

Your difficulty seems to be in the apparent contradiction that we accept government regulation on one hand, but then reject it in another case. This is based on confusing two very different concepts, both of which are these days described by the term “regulate”. In the 18th century meaning of the word “regulate” (the meaning under which the supreme law of the land was written) it meant merely to make regular, to make consistent and predictable. The regulation of property rights is only that which provides a consistent framework under which transactions can be entered into and enforced – it is completely agnostic as to the nature of the transaction.

The perverse current meaning of “regulate” is to modify the transactions themselves so as to produce some desired outcome. This is almost the complete opposite meaning. When you say, in effect, that we support regulation in the purchase of property but reject it in pursuit of environmental goals, you are using the same word with two different, contradictory meanings. Understanding that, there is no contradiction in the position you say you have a hard time accepting.

The agreements that facilitate property ownership are voluntary, but without recourse to the state to enforce them, they’re meaningless. Because so many contracts are required for there to be property ownership on a mass scale like we have in the U.S., the efficacy of the government has a lot to do with securing the means to property ownership, even without taking the tax breaks and Freddie Mac into account. Not to mention things like police forces, fire departments, and militaries, who protect your property in other ways.

In other words, private property ownership on the scale we have it today in the U.S. isn’t possible without the government’s intervention. In general, this is a positive social development and a good policy. But at the same time I have a hard time accepting that the government can intervene to facilitate property ownership but then has no legitimate role in regulating it due to environmental consequences. The balance that gets struck is a matter of policy.

I don’t buy the distinction between harms that affect people in a big way because they are adjacent to a parcel of property and harms that affect everybody in marginal but insidious ways, like environmental damage. Assuming for the sake of argument that biodiversity is an ethereal concern, then I accept that property should not be regulated for that reason. It’s precisely because I think declining biodiversity is a bad thing for human survival in the long run that makes it a legitimate basis upon which to regulate property. Where I stand turns on the factual issue of whether the harm is real or not. I’m not sure from your post that you’d accept a basis for regulation even if it was undisputed that something causes harm.

Not stealing my stuff isn’t the same thing as not taxing me because I get something in return for my taxes. If I get the same services that I received before except now I pay less for it, that works out to be the same thing as a subsidy.

The agreements that facilitate property ownership are voluntary, but without recourse to the state to enforce them, they’re meaningless. Because so many contracts are required for there to be property ownership on a mass scale like we have in the U.S., the efficacy of the government has a lot to do with securing the means to property ownership, even without taking the tax breaks and Freddie Mac into account. Not to mention things like police forces, fire departments, and militaries, who protect your property in other ways.

In other words, private property ownership on the scale we have it today in the U.S. isn’t possible without the government’s intervention. In general, this is a positive social development and a good policy. But at the same time I have a hard time accepting that the government can intervene to facilitate property ownership but then has no legitimate role in regulating it due to environmental consequences. The balance that gets struck is a matter of policy.

I don’t buy the distinction between harms that affect people in a big way because they are adjacent to a parcel of property and harms that affect everybody in marginal but insidious ways, like environmental damage. Assuming for the sake of argument that biodiversity is an ethereal concern, then I accept that property should not be regulated for that reason. It’s precisely because I think declining biodiversity is a bad thing for human survival in the long run that makes it a legitimate basis upon which to regulate property. Where I stand turns on the factual issue of whether the harm is real or not. I’m not sure from your post that you’d accept a basis for regulation even if it was undisputed that something causes harm.

The difference is very simple: The harms which come to adjacent property owners happen to real individuals and real property. Harms which supposedly hurt us all are so categorized because they cannot be linked back to actual individuals. You’ve still yet to explain how habitat destruction, reduced biodiversity, and increased auto-dependence harm REAL PEOPLE. You talk about the ethereal harm done to all society. The US government, though, was conceived to protect the rights of individuals from encroachments by other individuals, other nations, and the government itself. Sacrificing a individual’s rights, property or otherwise, to achieve some hardly-provable common good is not something that government should have a hand in.

Imagine if it became the common good to develop all unused land in order to keep up with the surging economies in Asia. Would you support the forced development of the lands owned by the Nature Conservancy? Would you support the eviction of retirees from their homes so that the land could be put to more economically purposes? I doubt you would. I doubt anybody would. We have to remeber Ronald Reagan’s admonishment on the power of government, “What government gives government can take away.”

The rights we have come from our history, our tradition, and most importantly, what we believe it is to be human. They do not come from the Constitution, nor are they granted at the grace of the sovereign. The Constitution does not grant rights, merely articulates certain ones. Property rights, along with life, liberty, the rights to free speech, religion, press, and assembly, the right to bear arms, the right not to incriminate one’s self, the right to be secure in one’s person and papers, and the right to legal due process were all deemed so important that the framers felt the need to clearly articulate them.

Rather than being an arbitrary grant of government, the framers viewed property rights as THE cornerstone of functioning democracy. Without the ability to own and use property, one is essentially powerless. If one is always on someone else’s property, he is always under someone else’s control. A glimpse of this phenomenon is seen in apartments, where the hanging of pictures can become a major ordeal.

As for the private mortgage system, as Kyle states, there is nothing arbitrary about it. The lender agrees to buy the property for you and allows you to occupy it and generally make use of it in return for payments with interest which generate income for the lender. When you’ve finished paying for the home (principal) and the lender’s services (interest and fees), you own the home. It’s one of the ingenious products of a free market system where each person is out for his own best interest.

All this, though, is a digression. The real question, indeed the burden of proof any issue involving common good, is whether the harm is so great as to justify the curtailment of individual rights. There is, though, a greater challenge than that: When actions cause no measurable harm to any individual, should individuals be deprived of their rights to prevent them?